Patience needed!

Here’s the shot from 2022, last time we met in Brighouse. TransPennine Express wasn’t stopping, but now, whenever route upgrade works close the Huddersfield line, they do! So you can, at a TPE price, and when the engineers deem it, get from Brighouse on a train through to Newcastle, York, Liverpool or Manchester Airport. Buses provide a replacement link for Huddersfield, which will happen more when big work starts remodelling the centre-piece of the Pennine upgrade with four tracks to Dewsbury. Sometimes Brighouse does less well. When the Dewsbury route is blocked our Northern “valley bottom” trains Manchester-Brighouse-Leeds trains go via Halifax and Bradford; Brighouse gets a bus link. (Northern crews from the North West, we understand, do not know the route via Wakefield.)

Brighouse had been top-performing Calder Valley station on percentage footfall growth. So we just can’t wait for things to get back to normal – with potentially more trains. Had Elland been open that could have been the interchange for replacement buses. We still need to be patient on that one – but soon, we hope.

Note view at back. Station Café on Gooder Lane. And now there’s a new one, The Shrub just across Huddersfield Road, as well as the Commercial Inn on the corner.